dsilverz

joined 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

Because of community and instance rules.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

While I previously had a Reddit account (which I don't really used in a frequent basis), I found about Lemmy through Mastodon, which in turn I found about through my search for social network alternative platforms. Turns out I've been participating at Lemmy more often through the entire 3 months I've been here than I participated at Reddit throughout more than a decade (I joined Reddit in 2012 IIRC).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

historically we’ve been using AM at lower frequencies, and these travel further

While I agree with that statement...

AM doesn’t reach further than FM

... i disagree here. Yes it kinda does, and there's why: FM deteriorates with phase shifting introduced by phenomena such as ionospheric reflection, while AM is more resilient to it because it encodes information as amplitude variations instead of frequency (and therefore, implicit phases) variations. Also, FM needs more bandwidth than AM. Also, the overlay of two or more simultaneous AM transmissions is "more understandable" than two or more simultaneous FM transmissions laying on the same frequency. Both the three are the reasons why the modern aviation continues to use AM for comm between TWR and airplanes, as an example. Not just by historical reasons, it's because AM is more resilient than FM.

By "reaching further", I don't mean the range of propagation because, as you correctly said, it has more to do about wavelength and, therefore, the carrier frequency. By "reaching further", I actually mean the capability for the signal to be correctly demodulated and minimally understandable at the end. If a signal can propagate across hundreds of thousands of kilometers (for example, between Earth and the Moon), but it can't be recognizable at the other point (because the phases are all messed up to the point of being unable to be demodulated), then the signal (as in the content to be transmitted/received) couldn't really "reach further".

Here goes an example: I live in Brazil, in the southeast. I was in Sao Paulo state (not the city) when I once managed to receive an English-spoken CB (Citizen Band, 11 meters, approx. 27MHz) transmission. Most of our neighboring countries are Spanish-speakers, the only nearest English-speaking country is Guyana (the nearest corner close to Jatapu River being 3,000 km from Sao Paulo in straight line), but I could tell by the operator accent that he was not from Guyana. The reception would be almost crystal-clear, if my receiving setup were better (I was using a RTL-SDR with a piece of long wire barely touching the outside of the antenna's jack). While there are repeaters for CB, they're not as common as VHF or UHF repeaters, where you can even find, for example, EchoLink repeaters, so the international transmission really made into my Brazilian home, and it was even daylight! I only could tell the signal because it was AM modulated.

When we talk about deep space communication, sure some things change, but most of the same rules apply.

These radio telescopes don’t transmit anything at all,

Back in 1974, the former Arecibo radiotelescope was used to transmit the famous Arecibo message (some sources Wikipedia and Universe Today). So, while they're most used for reception, they can be (and they were) used for transmitting as well. It's not a straightforward thing, it's not simply a switch to be toggled receive-or-transmit because they involve different electronic circuitry, but the structure, the dishes and the antenna, can both transmit and receive: for reception, it just interacts with electromagnetic fields, which induces an oscillating electrical current all the way through the structure until it's filtered (through electronic components such as variable capacitors) and amplified by a receiver circuit, while as for transmission, it conducts an oscillating electrical current and irradiates it, depending on the antenna shape and properties.

Much like a normal telescope doesn’t transmit light.

It's also a possible thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiments#List_of_retroreflectors

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

I once saw a video of a person touching a grounded sausage to the metallic structure of an AM radio tower, the transmission was audible as the sausage was being zapped. If there's a merely conductible thing grounded near the tower, I guess it'll sort of "coil whine" (a well-known phenomenon when electrical components physically vibrate due to the passage of current), converting to sound whatever it's being transmitted at the moment. This includes the tower structure itself, if the electrical grounding isn't properly done or if there's some grounding leak. Otherwise, a grounded thing touching the tower would suffice to convert the transmission into sound, if those radio-telescopes use AM modulation (I'd guess they do, because AM modulation is known for reaching longer distances than FM).

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago

Let S be an endless string which is a concatenation of every binary counting in succession, starting from zero all the way to infinity (without left zero-padding):

S = 01101110010111011110001001101010111100110111101111...
(from concatenating 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, and so far)

Let S' be a set of every sequential group of octets (8 bits) from string S, which can be represented as a base-10 number (between 0 and 255), like so:

S'_2 = [01101110, 01011101, 11100010, 01101010, 11110011, 01111011, ...]
S'_10 = [110, 93, 226, 106, 243, 123, ...]

I'd create an audio wave file whose samples are each octet from S'_10 as 8-bit audio samples, using a really low sampling rate (such as 8000 Hz or even 4000 Hz).
That sound, that particular sound, is what I'd transmit to the cosmos: the binary counting, something with a detectable pattern (although it'd be not so easily recognizable, but something that one could readily distinguish from randomness noise).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago

The graph is missing languages such as Portuguese and Arabic.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Darker doesn't always mean blacker. Symbolically, a blood moon is "darker" (as in "ominous" and "eerie") than a new moon. The red color has many meanings, ranging from passion to wrath. Even after science emerged to explain such phenomena (the red color being just the longest wavelength part of visible electromagnetic spectra, the blood moon being just a combination of physical and astrophysical factors such as Rayleigh scattering and planetary alignment, etc), the blood moon still gets a "bad omen" vibe nowadays, a vibe that's absolutely not present during new moons (it's worth mentioning that they happen once or twice every month, differently from a blood moon which is a somewhat-rare event).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

As a Brazilian, not much. Throughout my entire lifetime, I saw some Brazilians there and there wearing Halloween costumes but it's not as popular here as "quermesses" (kirmess, church fairs, happening mostly on Brazilian's interiorian towns), Carnival, Christmas or some "important" soccer game (such as Corinthians vs Palmeiras, or Flamengo vs Fluminense).

To me, particularly, no holiday (nor soccer games) holds any importance or meaning. In the end of the day, it'll be just capitalism mesmerizing people to spend money on temporary things.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It depends.

When the VGA socket I'm plugging the VGA cable has a screwing hole (for example, tower PCs as well as some HDMI-To-VGA adapters) , and I'm intending to let it plugged, I generally do screw them in, not entirely, but sufficiently to don't let it escape due to VGA cable's weight (especially if the cable has dozens of meters as well as those cilindrical magnetic thingies that reduces electromagnetic interference).

But one of my laptops have no screwing holes at the sides of the VGA socket so it's impossible to screw the VGA cable.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The difference is that the Linux distros won't force the user to upgrade with annoying popups or similar. The difference is that the newer versions of Linux distros won't have hardware requirements that will force the user to buy a new Pc altogether and contributing to e-waste.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

It's nice. Just as a suggestion, consider adding itch.io too. There are lots of good and free games, too.

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